


The Sea Change

by nonky



Category: Nancy Drew (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Melodrama, Other, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 15:42:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30108249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonky/pseuds/nonky
Summary: It was hard not to fall into a fantasy version of her life sometimes. Owen got to the hospital fast and they saved his life. He was there to defeat the Aglaeca, and take on the other ghosts. He would have been around for Christmas and maybe they would have taken their trip to New York. Nancy would have noticed a missed period far sooner, and taken a test. It would still have been a surprise, but not a white-knuckle decision. When she cried, he would have jimmied the lock on the bathroom door and held her.
Relationships: Nancy Drew/Owen Marvin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13
Collections: Nancy Drew TV Series (2019)





	The Sea Change

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for some graphic detail of childbirth and the medical discussion of pregnancy, including the options of adoption and abortion. Passing mention of Season one spoilers, in particular the final days of Lucy Sable.
> 
> If Nancy Drew was a soap opera, this is how I could see the end of season one winding into season two. It's a bit of a light read because I felt the melodrama holds up better in a single chapter. It's also a version of Nancy skewed a bit softer and more willing to empathize with other people. Taking away most of the ghostly parallels, it's how I feel reality might have forced her to reconcile the choices made by her various parents.

Nightmares were dreams, too, and sometimes they were omens. She had dreamed of looking down at her bloody hands trembling as they fumbled a squalling newborn against a ruined pink dress. Far below, the sea pounded the rocks at the foot of the bluffs. She didn’t have so much as a blanket for the fatherless child she had created, and the failure then was a fear so spiraling the urge to jump almost made sense.

Nancy never meant to hide her pregnancy. It was easy to miss the early symptoms between grieving and stress. Her periods had been irregular for a while, and she just wasn’t tracking them very well. She had been single by the end of her senior year, and in no shape to seek out romance when her mother was dying. 

The Claw wasn’t the healthiest work environment. The early-to-late shift changes and fried food would give anyone indigestion and fatigue. She was fighting with her father, and hooking up with Nick. She witnessed Tiffany Hudson’s murder and earned an adult criminal record investigating to clear her name. 

Her friends hadn’t been her friends at first, and Nick didn’t last long as her boyfriend. Everything was compacted into a hectic September and October that upended her whole identity. Once they got to the end of the protracted marathon of murders and spirits, Nancy had to acknowledge she’d changed Horseshoe Bay. There were things awake and skittering in the dark. They coveted life and warmth, and would steal it from the unwary people who didn’t know shadows might be able to kill them.

Nearly losing anyone she cared about had cemented her bond with George, Bess, Ace and Nick. Owen’s death was more complicated. They had barely been anything, but he’d died for her. She missed him, but her status in his life was so preliminary. The grief was private. She was grateful to have survived. 

Her court date was something of a relief, and the judge ruled lightly in favour of her age and her father’s inspired portrait of her misplaced grief as a fight for justice. He managed to leave out anything about Lucy Sable and Nancy’s identity crisis but set her up as somehow taking on death itself on behalf of her late mother. Her recent newsworthy cases had almost dared the prosecutor to be a hardass. Lisbeth wrote a letter of support and even Detective Tamura took the stand to acknowledge Nancy’s interference was meant to solve crimes.

Her community service took up a lot of time. She was juggling work at The Claw, work for Carson, and mopping floors around corpses. Missing meals as a result seemed reasonable. A sour stomach and loss of appetite was the only sane reaction to smelling formaldehyde and bleach all day. 

November passed into December. They all took turns being haunted or bringing in clients needing her help. Christmas was a series of muted celebrations. The Drews didn’t know how to mark the first one without Kate. Things were still emotionally tenuous. Ryan was a little part of her life, but it wasn’t as if she could show up at the big Hudson turkey dinner. Her friends were the highlight, and it was as nice as it could have been.

Winter in Horseshoe Bay was long and cold. People layered sweaters and ate junk food because a few extra pounds didn’t matter when the beach was under a foot of snow. Nancy gave in to Carson’s encouragement and signed up to Columbia’s remote courses. She dug out her SAT prep books and used her free time to study. Even ghosts seemed to be waiting out the snow to be more active.

The restaurant did a week of lobster specials around Valentine’s Day and seemed to gain a nice group of regular customers as a result. George and Nick were disgustingly happy, and Bess and Ace had a platanchor date as friends. Nancy’s two fathers both seemed moved to acknowledge she was the fifth wheel of the group. Carson took her to lunch and treated her to a big cheesecake slice. Ryan hand delivered an expensive box of truffles with some awkward small talk about his reading on fostering self esteem.

The treats set off a sweet tooth Nancy had never had before, and she knew she was gaining some weight. Once her clothing was feeling tight she made an effort to hold back, but the weight was stubborn. It wasn’t much, and she knew spring and summer waiting tables would slim her down. She focused on getting her community service out of the way. Columbia wasn’t possible for fall, but she might be able to start the new year on campus. 

Her second attempt at the SAT gave her a much better score. With her online courses, Nancy knew she was regaining a real chance to get back to the grades she’d let slip. It was getting harder to manage her restaurant shifts, though, and the time of year was slow. George let her off the hook for her second online semester, and told her to be ready to cover the occasional sick call. 

March was busy, and she sacrificed all her healthy eating to save time for studying. A weird flu left her achy and fighting to stay awake all day. Nancy completed her community service with a feeling of relief, marking the last day in her journal pages proudly. She wasn’t glad to have been caught in the morgue, but it had been the right thing to do to get peace for Lucy. Her family secrets were a heavy load, but she knew ignorance wasn’t a cure for any ill. 

The SAT math score she’d earned was pretty good, so Nancy was alarmed to realize how long it had been since she’d had a period. She started flipping back through the journal, and the thick wedge of pages was worrying. Last summer was the last definite one. She’d been seeing Nick, but they used protection. She always used protection. The nagging worry took hold, and she completed her second set of exams before she bought a test. Her nervous stomach couldn’t be blamed on morgue fumes anymore. Once she had a plus sign, the fluttery tickles in her belly meant she had a pretty big oversight to face. 

If the baby was Nick’s, she had conceived by September. She would be about six months along and likely too late to have an abortion. George and Nick were so happy, and Nancy couldn’t ruin that. She tried to remember any sign of a light period last fall. If it wasn’t Nick’s at least she wasn’t tearing apart her tiny group of friends with her stupidity. There was a gap of a few weeks between breaking up with Nick and her few times with Owen. It would be better if it was Owen’s baby, as lonely as it was to think of another child losing a parent without ever meeting.

Realizing she was pregnant seemed to unleash symptoms like catching a rare plague. Her ankles swelled and her back protested sitting, lying down and standing up. She got a rash from lotion she’d used for years. She cried for days and eventually pulled herself together to drive to the free clinic out of town. 

The same doctor who wouldn’t tell her about Lucy’s pregnancy confirmed it for Nancy with a sympathetic undertone. Dr. Sandoe seemed to understand it wasn’t happy news. 

“We need to try to narrow down a due date,” she said carefully. “If you really don’t recall your last period, when did you have sex?”

Nancy swallowed back her embarrassment and tried to be impartial. She believed in the truth. She’d somehow gotten fooled for months longer than she’d thought possible. 

“I was having protected sex with one partner pretty regularly from July to mid-September of last year. We broke up and I had sex a few times with a new partner in mid-October. That was with protection, too!”

Her defensiveness wasn’t necessary. The doctor had done this a million times, and Nancy’s drama was none of her business. 

“I believe you about the protection. It doesn’t always work, and every woman is different. Your hormone levels aren’t where they would be for July or August. September is a little more possible but from your measurements I would rule it out. You say you’ve been feeling movement?”

“I think so. It’s nothing big but it’s different from anything I’ve had on periods. Like nervous butterflies, but really heavy ones,” Nancy said hesitantly.

There was a clipboard with a lot of questions, and she was glaringly aware of her unhealthy decisions. 

“I had a couple of glasses of wine at a Christmas dinner,” she said. 

“A lot of women have a few before they know they should refrain. It’s not the end of the world. Do you drink or do drugs regularly?”

“No drugs. And I don’t drink often. I don’t like being out of control. I was treated for poisoning in September. I wrote down the name of the drug. It’s fairly unusual but I was checked out after. They did blood tests, and no one said anything about hormones, then,” Nancy told her.

Every pause and note on her file made her more nervous. She really didn’t want to have to tell Nick their breakup had left them even more baggage.

“An ultrasound will confirm but I don’t think you were pregnant prior to October. The size of the fetus is proportional to the size of the bump. You’re rather slim in general and carrying high and tight. Counting from October, I would put you at five to five and a half months right now. That is twenty to twenty-two weeks.”

Nancy had googled and calculated, knowing her choice was pressing. It wasn’t too much of a shock to hear the details from Dr. Sandoe.

“There are options. Abortion is legal prior to 24 weeks. It would have to be a quick decision but it’s not impossible. A social worker could help you through adoption services. There is no reason to believe you won’t be able to have a healthy baby despite missing the symptoms previously. If there are people you want to find out from you directly, I would try to have that conversation soon. The difference in visibility between five and six month gets very obvious.”

Her patient’s silence moved her to put down the paperwork and smile gently.

“May I ask about the partner from October? Is he in your life?”

“He, uh, died soon after. We weren’t together long.”

“I’m very sorry.” 

“So am I.”

It was hard not to fall into a fantasy version of her life sometimes. Owen got to the hospital fast and they saved his life. He was there to defeat the Aglaeca, and take on the other ghosts. He would have been around for Christmas and maybe they would have taken their trip to New York. Nancy would have noticed a missed period far sooner, and taken a test. It would still have been a surprise, but not a white-knuckle decision. When she cried, he would have jimmied the lock on the bathroom door and held her. 

Owen would have comforted her and said the right things. They would have talked it over. By now they would have either settled into the idea of parenthood or been through the doctor’s visits to end it early. It would have been both of them patting her rounding figure instead of Nancy poking at it like a dangerous growth. He would be proud and having conspiratorial talks with the baby. She would be trying to figure out how to break the news to her fathers.

Of course nothing was that lucky for anybody. Ryan Hudson had rooted for Owen to die. Her child was a link between the Hudsons and the Marvins, which was probably the only secret parentage more dangerous than being a secret Hudson hiding as a Drew. Nancy was not ready for this. 

“I have seen a lot of women on this same day in their lives,” the doctor said. “No one should tell you what to do. But the ones that go on to become single mothers never think they can do it at first. I see them back with their babies and toddlers and small kids and big kids. It’s something you can figure out if you want it.”

Because time was so short if Nancy wanted an abortion, the doctor did the ultrasound and set up an appointment for the following week. She had perhaps a week or two to act, and anything later would be a live birth. 

The pharmacy shopping bag of educational literature and vitamins didn’t have anything truly helpful for her mindset. It was so unfair to have to choose like this, in the swirl of emotions without an outlet or another adult to stand by her. Nancy knew she had a list of people she could call and they would all run to her side. But none of them owned this choice like she would or in the way Owen would have shared the consequences. 

She had glanced at the ultrasound screen and looked away before she freaked out loudly. The internal strange tides of turning limbs felt like a baby, and she couldn’t ignore that sentiment. Even if Owen had chosen not to participate as a father, he had been a good man who cared enough to die keeping her from harm. Her impulse to hide came from having a child to protect, not a shameful problem.

A few months of time would have made it acceptable to ask her friends or her father for guidance. As a hypothetical, Nancy would have said she was pro-choice. Her future plans were being scrapped a thousand times over, kicked over from inside her own body.

It was painful to submit to the history repeating, but she didn’t go to the appointment. She also called to book a new one for prenatal care in April. She wasn’t getting out of Horseshoe Bay to Columbia’s campus. She was going to be a mother around the time of her own real birthday, the night Lucy had hung on long enough to let Nancy live and given her away. 

She invested in some new clothes that hung looser, and made the rounds of her family and friends. Nancy was careful to be happy and give the good grades she was getting. She also made sure to mention how taxing it had been to get back the study habits she’d let go when she’d been losing her mother. 

“It’s been a lot more work than I anticipated. I’m really glad I wasn’t trying to stay on at the restaurant. I never would have passed everything. I’m just too rusty. It’s coming back, but I looked into the credits I need. I have to keep going through summer, or it’s going to set me back another full year.”

She was ashamed of lying to them. Everyone was so happy for her. George even brought up making her break from the restaurant longer. 

“I need to get some new blood in here, anyway,” she said. “Jessie is willing to give it another shot, and Charlie and Ted can do some table busing.”

“We’re so proud of you,” Bess said, “And I know you’ll look great in the Columbia colours. I’ve been working on a Pinterest list for you.”

Ace offered his unfettered tech support, and brought her requested milkshake with a little drawing of her in a graduation cap on a napkin. 

“We’re super proud. You’ll do great.”

“Columbia is going to accept you no problem,” Nick told her. “You deserve this, Nancy.”

She was thankful the baby was hers alone. Nick and George were building a life together and they already cared for George’s family. 

It was harder to hide her situation from her father. Part of her wanted to blurt everything and let Carson plot through to the patented Dad solution he was obliged to invent on the spot. He was a brilliant lawyer and he would know how to protect his grandchild. 

“This is really good,” he said. “Best news in forever, it feels like. So, I know you’re not working at the restaurant anymore, but if you need to give up working for me as well you should go full steam at the course work. Don’t worry about me.”

She needed some cash ready, and could probably hide her weight gain at least until July. “I can keep doing the file work. Anything else might be too much, and I don’t want to let you down,” Nancy told him. 

Carson’s smile was beaming. “You couldn’t possibly do that.”

She invited Ryan to the house for coffee, and gave him the update about her studies. He seemed nicely flattered to get the invitation without having to approach her first. 

“It sounds like you’re using your time well. I haven’t seen you around. Your life seems a lot quieter,” he said. 

“Well, it kind of had to get quieter than last year. It’s been good to put my head down and focus.”

Ryan nodded, toying with his mug. “You deserve a really good future. Do you need anything? Can I help?”

“Right now I just need to prove myself with my grades,” she told him. “That’s all on me. I might be hunkered down a while longer, but it’s for a good cause.”

Her courses were real, and she did the work to keep her application strong. Nancy spent the rest of her time trying to figure out the way she could secure the safety of a baby that was doubly impossible. She was having an unplanned child who was yet another threat to the Hudson fortune. She didn’t want their money, but Everett and Celia would never believe it. Even the Marvin family might be a little contentious with all the assorted cousins fighting for rank. Bess didn’t count, but the rest of them were not her allies. 

April and May flew by with another set of exams by the middle of June. Nancy wanted to be happy her baby was thriving, but the responsibility was a counterbalance. She should let it be adopted. It could disappear into a two parent home somewhere bigger. In twenty years she would be prepared to answer for her sacrifice. Babies were usually adopted quickly, and she knew hers was healthy from the constant tumbling. 

“It’s not that I don’t want you and love you,” she said, looking down fondly. “This town is a dark place and it’s just too small to hide your existence. Your father would want you to be safe. I want you to be safe.”

She shopped online for only a few baby things, refusing to raise hopes she would think of some safeguard to convince her she could keep her home and her child. 

She made it a point to do her infrequent visits on rainy days when she could bundle up and leave her coat on. Picking up file boxes from the loft covered her midsection, and she gave side hugs to her friends. There was always a big hoodie on the downstairs sofa, to throw on when she answered the door. 

Safe haven laws would let her drop off an infant at a hospital or fire station anonymously. If no one knew she’d been pregnant, no one could even begin to suspect there was a little boy or girl who had a claim to membership in two founding families. She might be asked to solve the mystery of the baby’s origins, but she could get out of that by making sure it was dropped off far away. 

Internally, Nancy had committed to giving birth in her house, leaving no record of her identity to link to her baby. She started reading up on home birth and if there was any way she could hire a midwife to assist her. Hospitals were too open, and she had to be paranoid. Modern medicine demanded anyone who could help her had to be registered and obliged to report a new baby.

The medical appointments were all good news. She was young and healthy but the doctor was assuming she’d be going to a hospital and doing things normally. Nancy couldn’t go around buying a bunch of medical supplies without getting flagged for a kidney theft scam. She scoured internet resources for natural births and tried not to let it freak her out too badly. If nothing else, gravity alone made babies come out. 

By July she was huge. No one would be fooled by anything except her wearing a blanket. Nancy made a lot of her difficulty with a fictional dense Russian lit course, with readings no one would voluntarily have chosen. She couldn’t risk someone stopping by to help her study. She had groceries delivered and stopped doing anything except homework. 

Her August was miserable. She was hot and on edge. The plan was ready. She would deliver at the house and recover for a day or two before she drove to the next state and put the baby outside a fire station in a tiny town with no links to any Hudson or Marvin. If she couldn’t drive, she would call upon her friends to get the baby there, but she was hoping to handle it herself. She trusted them to help, but conspiracies failed by the numbers. One person knowing a secret made it a rare thing. Two people watered it down. Three, four, five and more people and it was a tray of dainty tea cups desperate to spill.

She had days of insomnia and then a wave of dizzy hormones. The tightness in her chest and her back became the cramps she knew to expect. They carried on without stopping, no longer practice pains but the real thing. 

Another silver steak knife came out of her mother’s pantry, sterilized to cut the cord. Nancy brought extra blankets and stacks of towels to her bedroom. She carried her phone everywhere. If she needed to, she would call an ambulance.

She tried to eat and drink while she was still able to move around freely. Once she went upstairs she had bottles of water and some snacks but she wasn’t going to risk falling going to the kitchen. 

Texting her friends had become her only contact, and she tried to enjoy the play-by-play of Bess’s small waitress disasters. She accepted an invitation out next week. She resisted the urge to call her father and sob. 

A bath brought her a little comfort, but the labour was absolutely crushing. She paced and cried, trying to keep herself from hyperventilating. She went to sleep with the windows shut because she couldn’t help crying out. 

The next day she didn’t bother dressing. Her long t-shirt was modest enough and she’d made everyone promise to excuse her from answering her phone until she completed a fictional essay. Her research was all crap. Contractions were not like bad cramps. Contractions were like dying by being twisted in half. She threw pillows on the floor and tried every position. She clung to walls and furniture and gasped as agony actually blinded her. 

She ended up on all fours at the end of her bed, her arms up on the mattress as she heaved with the distant knowledge she had to be ready. Nancy wasn't sure she'd retained anything helpful. She had felt her body and there was definitely a stretch happening. She sometimes wanted to push but other times she was terrified. 

Her water breaking was a burst of bloody fluid that seemed catastrophic, and then she was just pushing anyway. It was too soon, but she couldn’t stop herself. Hours meant nothing. She tried to get sips of water down. Her heart was pounding and she really thought she might die. But she also didn’t think she could speak anymore to tell anyone what was happening, and she didn’t want an ambulance unless there was no choice. 

She bit through a pillow as the baby crowned, the expression making it sound much more majestic than her gnashing heaves. The head just sat there at her entrance for the longest time, and she stared into space until another pain made her into an animal. She was too hoarse to make a noise. Nancy hated the feel of the baby turning inside her, tiny shoulders like knives. Lucy couldn’t have done this on the edge of a cliff. No one could have ever done this. It was unbearable. She could feel the head bouncing with her shaking. It was an alienating feeling, not at all natural except for the despair.

Her poor baby, already almost gone from her. Lost before she knew she’d had it to lose. Killing her, maybe, and her condition too far gone to call for help.

She went faint and came to, her body already hunching into the do or die of the last push. Some instinct made her hand go up and lift at the little neck. Shuddering, she gripped her childhood bed, braced her feverish cheek on it, and emptied herself until it felt like her heart had pulled away with the fall of the baby to her limp hand.

There was no energy left to catch the baby and smile like the happy women in the youtube videos she’d watched. No one was there to praise her, tell her the gender or kiss her forehead tearfully. Nancy shook for long moments, dragging air until she could think. She was up on her knees, eyes and nose running. The baby hadn’t cried or she’d gone deaf from screaming. 

She nudged the little body along until she could see. Her vision blurred, but all the limbs were there. She moved slowly to plant her hip. The cord was a gory mess tangling her legs and the baby’s torso. She picked up a foot and touched it, feeling numb. 

The baby bawled for a second, and she lost all the ugly sensations of birth for the immediacy of motherhood. Nancy wrapped the baby. She forced herself to sit even though it was agonizing. Somewhere in her desperation she had stripped completely, and she was cold. There was blood all the way down to her feet. 

There were wipes to clean the baby’s face, and a bulb to clear the airway. She kept sucking out globs of something gooey until he was crying very angrily. He was a pointy-headed, red, somehow swollen and shriveled little person at the same time. 

He was also a boy. Her son, with Owen Marvin. Grandson somehow simultaneously to Carson and Kate Drew, Lucy Sable and Ryan Hudson. Her baby was the whole setting of a very long-running soap opera. 

Nancy understood everything about her parents without words. Lucy held on to the ruins of a young life because it wasn’t just her life anymore. Kate and Carson had only known of a threat, and had to take it seriously. One person mattered and he could be taken from her and literally murdered with barely an effort. She should use the waves of love and devotion to follow through on her plan to hide him forever. 

Oh, but she wanted to be his mother. He didn’t resemble anyone. He looked like a little alien. But he had survived with her through a lot. One of his grandfathers was an expert on having a baby in secret.

In bits and pieces she remembered what she should be doing for him. She wiped down her chest and brought his mouth to her nipple. She braced her back to the bed and tried not to disturb him as the contractions came back. Nancy had to stop nursing and lay him on the floor. She propped up on one knee and pushed until the afterbirth dropped like a horror movie special effect. She cut the cord and breathed through the disgust.

It was easier after that. She sat on the floor with her baby and switched him to the other breast. He was still so hungry for such a little person. She touched him all over and felt herself rally from some well of superhuman vitality. Two days hidden in her bed to make sure she didn’t pass out while driving wasn’t enough time. Any tiny mistake could derail her plan.

She was going to raise her son. He would be safe. Everything else was forfeit, including every old grudge and the secrets that had hurt her. She would burn half the town to cover her tracks if it became necessary.

Nancy managed to stand up and get herself into a bathrobe, still carrying her swaddled baby. She sat on her bed and called the one man who shouldn’t have to face this scene again. All was forgiven. Family was more than blood.

“Dad, I need your help.”

She didn’t get the words all the way out before she was crying, but it was enough to hear his frantic questions and know he was on his way.


End file.
